CNN RapeLay Controversy Sparks Angry Response

[TheAmazingTGIF]

Can I high-five this guy?

 

[GloatingSwine]

Is it just me or does everyone keep trying to reply something like, "How come you don't condemn video game violence?"
Picking up a bit of a trend here.
Not saying I like other types of violent crimes in video games either.
And just cuz something sells doesn't mean it's a good thing.

The point is that if you believe that there is a significant effect from a videogame "condoning" a particular type of action (up to you to prove that, by the way), it makes absolutely no sense to confine your discussion to rape (no matter the context of the thread), which is incredibly rare in videogames.

 

[Sonofadiddly]

Although I believe such games are sick and would avoid anyone who would create or play such games as though they were dripping with plague, it's not right to deride an entire people for something that a few people made.

How would playing a rape game make me a worse person, I have played rapelay out of curiosity and it didn't arouse me, but even if I loved to fantasize about rape (or even worse, raping children), that would still not make me a bad person, a sane person is perfectly capable separating his/her fantasies from ethical thinking and actions in the real world.

Alright, playing it out of curiosity would be okay, I suppose. Although I would still consider it suspect. And I never said someone with those fantasies is a bad person. I said I would stay the hell away from them. Personal preference. They can't help fantasizing, and I can't help being repulsed by them. A lot like I can't help being repulsed by spiders.

 

[hansari]

CNN isn't going to respond to this. First rule of media, if you get torn apart by someone and have no defense, ignore it. Your viewers won't know, they go to you for news.

Maybe your not living in US, but if you do, recall the Cramer v Jon Stewart...

 

[Tyler Whitney]

The problem with making games like RapeLay is that it encourages, condones, and/or justifies rape too much. I feel that sensible people SHOULD be offended by this; it shows that we still look down upon rape. If we become numb to it because of repeated appearances in video games and such, then we'll care less about the incident.

What you say about seperating fantasies from ethical thinking does make sense. However, one must consider the implications of it. What if someone decides to take advantage of that fantasy and make it real? That's where the fear lies.

This is going to be tricky to explain, but what would showing offense do other than just "showing offense"? I think media knows that people love things that illicit an emotion, including "offense". This is why there's numerous nontroversies that get national attention, even though their real impact on our daily lives is non-existent. The basic cycle is like some story pops up, like Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. For 15 minutes everyone talks about and the talking heads say how the public is offended about teen pregnancies and the sexualization of youth , etc. etc, and then it goes away when the next shiny thing attracts our attention.

Would that make this Rapelay thing all right? That a year later, most people wouldn't even remember, and the end sum is we all got offended and scared for a couple of minutes and went back and sat on our asses?

Honestly, who's going to read the Rapelay story and actually TAKE ACTION. Like, donate to a charity that helps abused women and mothers, or volunteer at a woman's shelter.

What really scares me about Rapelay is how much airtime it's getting. How much energy and time could have been spent to doing something real and proper? Like rape-kit backlogs, or human trafficking, or efforts to reduce spousal abuse.

 

[Boba Frag]

I hope I won't be accused of boiling the incisive, deft argument from Mr. Nogami by posting this, I utterly agree with him...

But it kind of reminds me of a scene from Red Sun starring both the illustrious Toshiro Mifune and the commanding Charles Bronson.
Well played, Mr. Nogami.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_E9vFLw-R0

EDIT:

I agree that the game in question is despicable... That's just my opinion. The fact that the general consenus on the thread is that rape is a reprehensible, repulsive act of violence is kind of reassuring, so there must be some good left in the world!

I'll be staying out of the debate over societal norms as I'm quite sleepy..

 

[justblues]

wow nice burn

 

[the_bearpelt]

Of course you have a right to be offended and a right to speak your mind about what you think of the game and even say that it should be protested, but you don't have a right to criminalize it.

I find it a bit worrying when you say that you would permit hate speech, do you even know what that concept means? If it were permitted, I could publish a newspaper in which I proclaim that X ethnic minority is evil / cause of all our problems / demons and that they should be attacked / beaten / killed.

I seem to have stirred up a lot of responses. (I hope I don't get in trouble for so many posts in a row, but this discussion is too good to miss.)

Sorry it's taking me a few seconds to get to your reply. I seem to be getting quite a few. I'm enjoying our discussion too. While we disagree, you've been very polite about it and I really respect you for that. I must formally thank you for such a riveting discussion.

Back to arguing. (LOLZ *stupid face*)
When you say criminalize, do you mean punish through the law? I definitly see what you're saying. I'm of the mind that the public opinion should condemn things and punish through not buying products rather than being fined or jailed by the government.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely loathe hate speech and those who participate in it. My dad's Jewish and I've even run into some anti-Semitism myself. I absolutely hate it.
But, this is America. (Where I live, anyways.) Freedom of speech means freedom of all speech that doesn't specfically endanger someone. And people still publish papers with racist and anti-Semetic hate speech now, in other countries and in America. While the government certainly shouldn't do things like that, the rest of the public can say those things. However, I re-emphasize that the public should also completely condemn it. I feel that part of the reason there is less hate speech made public in America today is because my generation looks so disfavorably upon it.
But I do loath hate speech. People like that are awful.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

All I can say is well played Mr. Nogami.

Yep, way to put them in their place.

 

[RikSharp]

in the same way that modern warfare encourages, condones, and/or justifies shooting people or virtua fighter encourages, condones, and/or justifies punching people in the face or GTA encourages, condones, and/or justifies mass crime sprees?

you cant have one rule for one and one rule for another, either they are all affecting us mentally and turning us all into the criminals the media says we should be or they are all just games and the targeted audience of them can separate the games from reality.

True, true. But I'm not saying I'm happy with GTA either. In fact, I despise the game.

While making seperate rules for two crimes can be a bit of a double standard, I feel it should be said that with things that complex (due to situations and factors, etc) you can't make blanket statements/rules about them either. Each is different. So I supposed there needs to be a balance between avoiding double standards while making statements/rules that match individual crimes.

to use my above examples, face punching, shooting people, crime sprees and rape are all wrong, nobody is denying that (i would hope) but the questions that we get to when following your point are: since they are to all have different statements or rules as the act involved is different, how do we decide what rules effect with what action? who decides which wrong is more wrong than the others and what rules should apply to which action.
i could ask people "which is worse, shooting someone or rapeing someone?" and one person may say rape is worse as they have to live with that forever, another may say shooting is worse, at least the rape victim isn't dead.

 

[UnusualStranger]

I try, I really do

Thanks. I think people are too generic when they shorten the things, so I change em a bit!

Anyway, I do not think we were fine before video games were invented anyway, we were just a lot more private and secluded from each other. That is another discussion though.

You believe we should react to such things. However, we run into another problem: People are reacting to EVERYTHING now. President doing something? Publicized reaction. New movie coming out? Publicized reaction.
We are suffering from "reaction overdose". Something similar to "Crisis Fatigue", it is when so many things demand the same amount of attention and outrage that we do not have the time nor energy to keep up with them all. People stop caring after a while.

And I am pretty sure we all have a few screws loose when it comes to something. It is just we don't have the resources to survive making such knowledge public!

(don't worry about replies. This is what these forums are about! Kinda happy I found this, actually.)

 

[the_bearpelt]

The point is that if you believe that there is a significant effect from a videogame "condoning" a particular type of action (up to you to prove that, by the way), it makes absolutely no sense to confine your discussion to rape (no matter the context of the thread), which is incredibly rare in videogames.

Ah, gotcha. But I maintain that I don't really like the violence in video games today.
I mean, it's one thing when it's like Final Fantasy or something, where it's turn-based and not at all realistic. I can understand enjoying throwing some magic attacks at generic bad guys. But when it gets to things more like GTA, where you're blowing people's brains out, I tend to be more offended.

 

[dochmbi]

http://stickfigurechildporn.blogspot.com/

Just had to put that out there

 

[the_bearpelt]

20X more rape in the U.S. than Japan. As an outside observer (Canadian) I don't believe that the Americans can patronize the Japanese as far as rape goes :/

May I politely direct you to post 76 of this thread?

since they are to all have different statements or rules as the act involved is different, how do we decide what rules effect with what action? who decides which wrong is more wrong than the others and what rules should apply to which action.

Sadly, that's the problem. I can't make a statement about that myself because that sort of statement should be agonized over for many hours, possibly even years. If a decision like that were to be made indefinitly, the rules would have to be very carefully prepared. I don't think we should necessarily make laws like that; stuff like that doesn't usually work. I think something more along the lines of common sense would make more sense.
That being said, I'm all for an eye for an eye. (People misinterpret that as meaning the punishment is the crime itself. What it means is that punishment is equal to the crime.) Of course, that's sort of vague, isn't it?

 

[GloatingSwine]

But when it gets to things more like GTA, where you're blowing people's brains out, I tend to be more offended.

However, one person's offence at a thing is irrelevant, especially to that thing "condoning" a certain act, be it violence, rape, theft, or any other social harm ("condoning" an act, remember, means that it sends a social message stating that the act is acceptable). This is something which first requires objective supporting evidence, and further requires objective evidence that in doing so it causes a social harm (increases the incidence of the act it condones, or decreases the level of social responsibility regarding the punishment of that act).

Without showing that there is any social harm from the presentation of any unpleasant act in a videogame, there is no cause to ban them, even if they offend some people.

 

[the_bearpelt]

I try, I really do

Thanks. I think people are too generic when they shorten the things, so I change em a bit!

Anyway, I do not think we were fine before video games were invented anyway, we were just a lot more private and secluded from each other. That is another discussion though.

You believe we should react to such things. However, we run into another problem: People are reacting to EVERYTHING now. President doing something? Publicized reaction. New movie coming out? Publicized reaction.
We are suffering from "reaction overdose". Something similar to "Crisis Fatigue", it is when so many things demand the same amount of attention and outrage that we do not have the time nor energy to keep up with them all. People stop caring after a while.

And I am pretty sure we all have a few screws loose when it comes to something. It is just we don't have the resources to survive making such knowledge public!

(don't worry about replies. This is what these forums are about! Kinda happy I found this, actually.)

(=D)
If we WERE perfectly fine before video games, then I'm six feet tall. (I'm notoriously short in person.)

That is true, to a degree. While I feel we SHOULD react to things, there is a point where things go overboard. My personal philosophy is that you shouldn't have too much of anything. (I count "too little" as "too much of a lack of something".) Sadly, I also feel that you can't manage things like that with rules or laws; it wouldn't be effective and would make things worse. So I don't really know what the solution is.

Hah, I hadn't thought of that.
But allow me to still feel disgusted with the creators of RapeLay and SAW. Especially RapeLay. I'm a small, petite, not particularly strong woman who's going off to college this fall and have to think about how to avoid situations where I could be hurt like that. It's sort of on the forefront of my mind and I feel that no man could ever truly understand why rape is almost every woman's true greatest fear. (Although you could say the same thing with the genders flipped. It means different things to each gender, I feel.)

 

[The Singularity]

Leave Japan alone CNN your values and beliefs mean nothing to them. Besides we all know that the entire population of Japan is perverted old men. Thats why they need the porno games, they have no women!

 

[dochmbi]

Of course you have a right to be offended and a right to speak your mind about what you think of the game and even say that it should be protested, but you don't have a right to criminalize it.

I find it a bit worrying when you say that you would permit hate speech, do you even know what that concept means? If it were permitted, I could publish a newspaper in which I proclaim that X ethnic minority is evil / cause of all our problems / demons and that they should be attacked / beaten / killed.

I seem to have stirred up a lot of responses. (I hope I don't get in trouble for so many posts in a row, but this discussion is too good to miss.)

Sorry it's taking me a few seconds to get to your reply. I seem to be getting quite a few. I'm enjoying our discussion too. While we disagree, you've been very polite about it and I really respect you for that. I must formally thank you for such a riveting discussion.

Back to arguing. (LOLZ *stupid face*)
When you say criminalize, do you mean punish through the law? I definitly see what you're saying. I'm of the mind that the public opinion should condemn things and punish through not buying products rather than being fined or jailed by the government.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely loathe hate speech and those who participate in it. My dad's Jewish and I've even run into some anti-Semitism myself. I absolutely hate it.
But, this is America. (Where I live, anyways.) Freedom of speech means freedom of all speech that doesn't specfically endanger someone. And people still publish papers with racist and anti-Semetic hate speech now, in other countries and in America. While the government certainly shouldn't do things like that, the rest of the public can say those things. However, I re-emphasize that the public should also completely condemn it. I feel that part of the reason there is less hate speech made public in America today is because my generation looks so disfavorably upon it.
But I do loath hate speech. People like that are awful.

I just checked wikipedia with regards to hate speech in the USA, and it seems that in your country free speech is indeed absolute. From wikipedia:

This strict standard prevents prosecution of many cases of incitement, including prosecution of those advocating violent opposition to the government, and those exhorting violence against racial, ethnic, or gender minorities.

I live in Finland where we have a no-hate-speech-law and apparently most european countries also have such a law. I think it's a reasonable restriction to have, because it doesn't restrict political discourse in any way which would be harmful to the healthy development of society. I could imagine many situations where permitting hate speech would be harmful, but none in which permitting it would be beneficial, please do tell if you can think of one such situation.

 

[Seydaman]

They. Got. Served.

Now, that's a defense. Bringing hard crime rate facts into the mix.

**Raises magical wine glass of non-existancy** WHY YES MIDEAR THEY HAST BEEN SERVED
On a serious note: Nice one.

 

[the_bearpelt]

http://stickfigurechildporn.blogspot.com/

Oh good lord, that's just being silly.

However, one person's offence at a thing is irrelevant, especially to that thing "condoning" a certain act, be it violence, rape, theft, or any other social harm ("condoning" an act, remember, means that it sends a social message stating that the act is acceptable). This is something which first requires objective supporting evidence, and further requires objective evidence that in doing so it causes a social harm (increases the incidence of the act it condones, or decreases the level of social responsibility regarding the punishment of that act).

Without showing that there is any social harm from the presentation of any unpleasant act in a videogame, there is no cause to ban them, even if they offend some people.

Certainly true. I'm not saying they SHOULD be banned. Just that they SHOULD be scandalized. Banning creative developments of any kind could hinder actual intellectual advances. But people can certainly be offended.
And while you say a single person's offense is irrelevant, let me add something. While I'm sure this isn't quite what you meant, it's just something to think about. The problem with majority votes is that sometimes what the majority votes isn't morally right. If there are two men and one woman and the two guys vote that it's allright to rape her, majority wins. Doesn't make it right. So an individual's offense can be a very important thing. (However, you ARE correct in saying that evidence should propel such offense.)